General (Ret) James David is mentioned on the cover of the third edition of former Republican congressman Paul Findley’s ‘They Dare to Speak Out’ book about the power/influence of the pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC and similar) on the US political system and media:

Sweden denies Israel request to condemn IDF organ harvest article

Friday, August 21, 2009 9:05 AM

From: General (Ret) James David

Could this be the first? Seldom do we see anyone, especially the foreign minister of another country, stand up to Israel’s demands and threats. Instead of trying to refute these criminal allegations, it’s much easier for the Israelis to equate criticism of Israel with “anti-Semitism”—something that the Israelis have always used to prevent any investigation of their past crimes. Fortunately, things are beginning to change. Wouldn’t it be nice if the U.S. caught on as well?

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has rejected Israeli calls for an official condemnation of a recent article by a top Swedish newspaper that alleged that Israel Defense Forces soldiers kill Palestinian civilians in order to harvest their organs.Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had asked Bildt to print a a state rebuttal to the piece, which was published earlier this week in Sweden’s top newspaper Aftonbladet. Israel’s Ambassador to Sweden Benny Dagan was expected to make a similar request during a meeting Friday with Sweden’s Deputy Foreign Minister.Bildt denied the request, however, writing in a blog post late Thursday that he would not condemn the article as “freedom of expressionis part of the Swedish constitution.”

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“Freedom of expression and press freedom are very strong in our constitution by tradition. And that strong protection has served our democracy and our country well,” Bildt wrote.

“If I were engaged in editing all strange debate contributions in different media I probably wouldn’t have time to do much else.”

Bildt said he understood why the article stirred strong emotions in Israel, but said basic values in society are best protected by free discussion.

The article has enraged Israeli officials, who called it blatantly racist and said it played on vile anti-Semitic themes.

Bildt, meanwhile, says the condemnation of anti-Semitism is “the only issue on which there has ever been complete unity in the Swedish parliament.”

The article in Sweden’s biggest-selling newspaper was first reported internationally by Haaretz.com on Tuesday, and has sparked fierce widespread debate both in Sweden and abroad. The article claims that as far back as 1992, the IDF was taking organs from Palestinian youths it killed, and also mentions an ongoing U.S. crime investigation involving members of the American Jewish community.

The Foreign Ministry is doubtful that the Swedish government will publish a condemnation, and are therefore considering other measures. One idea is to cancel an upcoming visit by Bildt to Israel, which is planned for ten days from now.

Another idea is to allow Bildt to make his visit to Israel, but to use the visit as a well publicized criticism of the article, and for officials to refuse to speak with him about any subject other than the article.

Foreign ministry officials said if there is no official Swedish condemnation this crisis will not be solved.

Lieberman has informed foreign ministry employees to weigh canceling the government press cards of writers from Aptonbladt in Israel, as well as to refuse to assist the paper in any way whatsoever in covering Israeli news.

It also emerged Thursday that Defense Minister Ehud Barak is considering a slander lawsuit against the writer of the article.

The Swedish government on Thursday distanced itself from a statement by its ambassador to Israel, in which she criticized the article saying that “the condemnation was solely the judgment of the embassy [in Tel Aviv], and designed for an Israeli audience.” The comments came in a statement released Thursday by the Swedish Foreign Ministry.

“The article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet is as shocking and appalling to us Swedes, as it is to Israeli citizens,” said Ambassador Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier on Wednesday.

“Just as in Israel, freedom of the press prevails in Sweden,” Bonnier said. “However, freedom of the press and freedom of expression are freedoms which carry a certain responsibility.”

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has rejected Israeli calls for official condemnation of a Swedish newspaper article about organ harvesting, saying freedom of expression is a cornerstone of democracy.

Murdering Palestinians for their organs
Today at 4:49am
By Khalid Amayreh

OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM — Israeli officials and spokespersons have been railing against a leading Swedish newspaper for publishing a report claiming that the Israeli occupation army murders Palestinians in order to use their organs for transplants for Jewish patients.

The Tabloid Aftonbladet, one of Sweden ’s most popular newspapers, on Tuesday, 18 August, reported that Israeli occupation soldiers had been murdering Palestinian youngsters in the West Bank in order to extricate their organs and sell them. The report carried a photograph showing the body of a victim of such an execution, with a large scar running from his chin to abdomen.

The report quotes the family of one of the victims as saying that “our sons were plundered from their organs.” The report also makes a connection with the recent corruption scandal in New Jersey involving elected officials, rabbis, and illegal organ trading.

The author of the report, Donald Bostrom, spoke of a strong suspicion among Palestinians that young men’s organs were harvested by the Israeli army. He suggests that the International Court of Justice in the Hague should open an investigation into the matter.

Witness

Bostrom quotes a Palestinian witness as describing one case in which the Israeli occupation army shot dead a young Palestinian from a West Bank village and then extricated his organs. The Palestinian victim is identified as Bilal Ahmed Ghniyan.

“He was taken away by a military helicopter and brought back by the army five days later, dead. As his family members buried him, they saw a large scar running from his stomach to his chin.”

Bostrom also quotes other eye-witnesses testifying that their sons were used as “forced organ donors.”

“Blood libel”

Israeli spokesperson and Foreign Ministry officials were raving and ranting against Aftonbladet accusing the mass circulation newspaper of indulging in “blood libel” and making “canards” against Israel .

Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor said the Swedish newspaper had “turned the demonization of Israel into a sacred cause.”

Other Israeli officials threatened to sue the Swedish newspaper for libel, claiming that the report was an expression of anti-Semitism.

Israel has been reacting with exaggerated sensitivity toward international criticisms of its manifestly harsh treatment of Palestinians and the brazen racism associated with this treatment.

Earlier this year, the Israeli army, using internationally- banned weapons launched a massive and deadly blitzkrieg on the virtually unprotected population of the Gaza Strip, killing, maiming and incinerating thousands of innocent civilians, including hundreds of children.

Human rights organizations described the huge rampage of terror and death, which lasted for more than 20 days, as “clear war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”

Similarly, Israel had killed thousands of innocent civilians in the West Bank , and many of the victims were sent to the Abu Kabir forensic institute for autopsy operations.

However, it is unclear if the vital organs of these young victims were always disposed of or taken out for transplant in Jewish patients.

The Israeli army, which exerts huge political and legal influence in Israel , nearly always resisted scrutiny of its operations in the West Bank which are carried out in utter violation of international law, especially the international humanitarian law.

Precedent

In January, 2002, an Israeli cabinet minister tacitly admitted that organs taken from the bodies of Palestinian victims might have been used for transplants in Jewish patients without the knowledge of the Palestinian victims’ families.

The minister, Nessim Dahan, said in response to a question by an Arab Knesset member that he couldn’t deny or confirm that organs of Palestinian youths and children killed by the Israeli army were taken out for transplants or scientific research.

“I couldn’t say for sure that something like that didn’t happen.”

The Arab Knesset member who posed the question to Dahan is believed to be Ahmed Teibi. Teibi pointed out that he had received “credible evidence” proving that Israeli doctors at the forensic institute of Abu Kabir extracted such vital organs as the heart, kidneys, and liver from the bodies of Palestinian youth and children killed by the Israeli army in Gaza and the West Bank .

During an interview with al-Jazeera TV in 2002, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accused the Israeli apartheid regime of murdering Palestinian infants, children, and youths and harvesting their vital organs for transplants.

“They murder our kids and use their organs as spare parts` Why is the whole world silent? Israel takes advantage of this silence to escalate it’s oppression and terror against our people,” said an angry President Arafat.

During the interview, which took place on 14 January, 2002, Arafat held up photos of the mutilated bodies of the children.

“I’m not worried about myself”, as the President is under house arrest, “I’m worried about the Palestinian people who have been under siege for the past 15 months.”

Israel had admitted that doctors at the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir had harvested the organs of 3 Palestinian youth killed by the Israeli army near Khan Younis.

After 10 days the bodies of the three victims were returned to their families for burial but with their organs and even their eyes removed.

Israel never carried out a serious investigation into this and other incidents involving the extrication of vital organs from the body of Palestinian victims killed by the Israeli occupation forces.

According to reporter Saira Soufan, the illegal harvesting of the organs of Palestinian soldiers and freedom fighters has been documented since before the 1990’s.

“Upon return of the soldiers’ bodies to their mourning families, the pillage of body parts is discovered during the burial process.

“ The empty cavities have been filled with garbage such as cotton wool, garden hoses, and broomsticks, then sewn up as a result of a so-called ‘autopsy.’”

Occasionally, Israeli authorities steal body organs from the bodies of tourists who die in Israel .

An unpublicized instance occurred in 1998, when a Scotsman, Alistair Sinclair, died under mysterious circumstances in the Ben-Gurion Airport lockup.

Mr. Sinclair’s parents sued the Israeli authorities upon finding that their son’s heart and other organs missing. A replacement heart and organs were sent to his mother, who didn’t believe that these were those of her son’s.

Israel to Sweden: We want a clear denunciation not meditations on a blog

Saturday, August 22, 2009 9:00 AM
From: General (Ret) James David

And the beat goes on. As is the norm, the Israelis will never give in until they have their way. And it must be exactly the way they demand.
More threats by Israel directed at the Swedish government demanding a clear denunciation and not just a blog in reference to the recent article in Swedish newspapers alleging that Israeli Defense Forces kill Palestinian civilians in order to harvest their organs. And it didn’t take long before the Israelis used and exploited the holocaust in order to silence any criticism of the Jewish state. Be sure to read the highlighted paragraph below to see what I mean.

Israel to Sweden: We want a clear denunciation not meditations on a blog – Haaretz – Israel News

Israel to Sweden: We want a clear denunciation not meditations on a blog

By Assaf Uni and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and The Associated Press

Tags: Israel News

The Israeli Ambassador to Sweden met with Deputy Foreign Minister of the Scandinavian country on Friday, in a bid to solve the developing crisis between the two nations over a recent article by a top Swedish newspaper alleging that Israel Defense Forces soldiers kill Palestinian civilians in order to harvest their organs.

During the meeting, Israeli envoy Benny Dagan harshly criticized the Swedish government and called for them to issue a denunciation of the article. Sweden’s Deputy Foreign Minister Frank Belfrage emphasized his country’s freedom of speech and how it limits the ability of the government to respond to articles in the media.

Dagan rebuffed Belfrage’s explanation, saying that in the past the Swedish government responded to similar articles and their reluctance to do so in this case has made it unclear what their stance is.
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The article claims that as far back as 1992, the IDF had removed organs from Palestinian youths killed in clashes. It also makes a link to an alleged crime syndicate in New Jersey, which includes several members of the American Jewish community, as well as one Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who faces charges of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant.

Belfrage told Dagan that Bildt had responded to the article in a blog entry, which Dagan told him was not sufficient because it is unclear in a blog whether or not he is speaking as a private citizen or as the foreign minister.

Dagan then told Belfrage that the historical legacy of the Holocaust made the issue all the more important to Israelis, in that hateful words and anti-Semitism can often evolve into violent actions. Dagan also expressed his fear that the article could lead to violence against Jews.

Dagan told Belfrage that Israel believes the responsibility for cooling tensions over the article lies with the Swedish government, and said it was imperative for Sweden to resolve the crisis before the country’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt visits Israel on September 10th.

The meeting had been scheduled before the article was published, officials in the Swedish foreign ministry told local news agencies on Friday that it would now be used to address the escalating tension between the two countries.

Swedish officials said Thursday that comments by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in response to the article “had aroused anger” in Stockholm.

The article in Sweden’s biggest-selling newspaper, first reported internationally by Haaretz.com on Tuesday, has sparked fierce widespread debate both in Sweden and abroad.

Lieberman on Thursday criticized Sweden for not intervening in “the blood libel against Jews.” He said that “the affair is reminiscent of the state’s [Sweden’s] stand during World War II, when it also did not intervene.”

On Thursday, Bildt rejected Israeli calls for an official condemnation of the article.

Lieberman had asked Bildt to print a a state rebuttal to the piece. Dagan was expected to make a similar request during his meeting with Swedish Foreign Ministry officials.

Bildt denied the request, however, writing in a blog post late Thursday that he would not condemn the article as “freedom of expression is part of the Swedish constitution.”

“Freedom of expression and press freedom are very strong in our constitution by tradition. And that strong protection has served our democracy and our country well,” Bildt wrote.

“If I were engaged in editing all strange debate contributions in different media I probably wouldn’t have time to do much else.”

Bildt said he understood why the article stirred strong emotions in Israel, but said basic values in society are best protected by free discussion.

The article has enraged Israeli officials, who called it blatantly racist and said it played on vile anti-Semitic themes.

Bildt, meanwhile, says the rejection of anti-Semitism is “the only issue on which there has ever been complete unity in the Swedish parliament.”

Israeli measures

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem had been doubtful that the Swedish government would publish a condemnation of the article, and was considering other measures. One idea is to cancel an upcoming visit by Bildt to Israel, set take place in 10 days.

Another idea was to allow Bildt to make the visit, but to use the trip as a well publicized criticism of the article, and for Israeli officials to refuse to speak with him about any subject other than the article.

Foreign Ministry officials the crisis would not end without official Swedish condemnation of the article.

Lieberman has informed Foreign Ministry employees to consider the cancellation of government press cards given to Aftonbladet reporters in Israel, as well as to refuse to assist the paper in any way whatsoever in covering Israeli news.

It also emerged Thursday that Defense Minister Ehud Barak is considering a libel lawsuit against Donald Boström, the writer of the article. Boström has reportedly been trying to publish a version of the article about Israel harvesting organs since 1992.

The Swedish government on Thursday distanced itself from a statement by its ambassador to Israel, in which she criticized the article saying that “the condemnation was solely the judgment of the embassy [in Tel Aviv], and designed for an Israeli audience.” The comments came in a statement released Thursday by the Swedish Foreign Ministry.

“The article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet is as shocking and appalling to us Swedes, as it is to Israeli citizens,” said Ambassador Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier on Wednesday.

“Just as in Israel, freedom of the press prevails in Sweden,” Bonnier said. “However, freedom of the press and freedom of expression are freedoms which carry a certain responsibility.”

This article in reference to Swedish Jews and their reaction to Israel’s demand for an apology is very interesting and right on the mark. If you take a look at Haaretz, the Israelis are now trying to keep the news out of the limelight.

Last week Sweden’s largest daily newspaper published an article containing shocking material: testimony and circumstantial evidence indicating that Israelis may have been harvesting internal organs from Palestinian prisoners without consent for many years.

Worse yet, some of the information reported in the article suggests that in some instances Palestinians may have been captured with this macabre purpose in mind.

In the article, “Our sons plundered for their organs,” veteran journalist Donald Bostrom writes that Palestinians “harbor strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country’s organ reserve – a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes.”1/

An army of Israeli officials and apologists immediately went into high gear, calling both Bostrom and the newspaper’s editors “anti-Semitic.” The Israeli foreign minister was reportedly “aghast” and termed it “a demonizing piece of blood libel.” An Israeli official called it “hate porn.”

Commentary magazine wrote that the story was “merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of European funded and promoted anti-Israel hate.” Numerous people likened the article to the medieval “blood libel,” (widely refuted stories that Jews killed people to use their blood in religious rituals). Even some pro-Palestinian writers joined in the criticism, expressing skepticism.

The fact is, however, that substantiated evidence of public and private organ trafficking and theft, and allegations of worse, have been widely reported for many years. Given such context, the Swedish charges become far more plausible than might otherwise be the case and suggest that an investigation could well turn up significant information.

Below are a few examples of previous reports on this topic.

Israel’s first heart transplant

Israel’s very first, historic heart transplant used a heart removed from a living patient without consent or consulting his family.

In December 1968 a man named Avraham Sadegat (the New York Times seems to give his name as A Savgat) (2) died two days after a stroke, even though his family had been told he was “doing well.”

After initially refusing to release his body, the Israeli hospital where he was being treated finally turned the man’s body over to his family. They discovered that his upper body was wrapped in bandages; an odd situation, they felt, for someone who had suffered a stroke.

When they removed the bandages, they discovered that the chest cavity was stuffed with bandages, and the heart was missing.

During this time, the headline-making Israeli heart transplant had occurred. After their initial shock, the man’s wife and brother began to put the two events together and demanded answers.

The hospital at first denied that Sadegat’s heart had been used in the headline-making transplant, but the family raised a media storm and eventually applied to three cabinet ministers. Finally, weeks later and after the family had signed a document promising not to sue, the hospital admitted that Sadagat’s heart had been used.

The hospital explained that it had abided by Israeli law, which allowed organs to be harvested without the family’s consent. (3) (The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime includes the extraction of organs in its definition of human exploitation.)

Indications that the removal of Sadagat’s heart was the actual cause of death went unaddressed.

Director of forensic medicine on missing organs

A 1990 article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs entitled “Autopsies and Executions” by Mary Barrett reports on the grotesque killings of young Palestinians. It includes an interview with Dr. Hatem Abu Ghazalch, the former chief health official for the West Bank under Jordanian administration and director of forensic medicine and autopsies.

Barrett asks him about “the widespread anxiety over organ thefts which has gripped Gaza and the West Bank since the intifada began in December of 1987.”

He responded:

“There are indications that for one reason or another, organs, especially eyes and kidneys, were removed from the bodies during the first year or year and a half. There were just too many reports by credible people for there to be nothing happening. If someone is shot in the head and comes home in a plastic bag without internal organs, what will people assume?” (4)

Mysterious Scottish death

In 1998 a Scot named Alisdair Sinclair died under questionable circumstances while in Israeli custody at Ben Gurion airport.

His family was informed of the death and, according to a report in J Weekly, “…told they had three weeks to come up with about $4,900 to fly Sinclair’s corpse home. [Alisdair’s brother] says the Israelis seemed to be pushing a different option: burying Sinclair in a Christian cemetery in Israel, at a cost of about $1,300.”

The family scraped up the money, brought the body home, and had an autopsy performed at the University of Glasgow. It turned out that Alisdair’s heart and a tiny throat bone were missing. At this point the British Embassy filed a complaint with Israel.

The J report states:

“A heart said to be Sinclair’s was subsequently repatriated to Britain, free of charge. James wanted the [Israeli] Forensic Institute to pay for a DNA test to confirm that this heart was indeed their brother’s, but the Institute’s director, Professor Jehuda Hiss refused, citing the prohibitive cost, estimated by some sources at $1,500.”

Despite repeated requests from the British Embassy for the Israeli pathologist’s and police reports, Israeli officials refused to release either. (5,6,7)

Israeli government officials raise questions

Palestinian journalist Khalid Amayreh reports in an article in CCUN:

“In January, 2002, an Israeli cabinet minister tacitly admitted that organs taken from the bodies of Palestinian victims might have been used for transplants in Jewish patients without the knowledge of the Palestinian victims’ families.

“The minister, Nessim Dahan, said in response to a question by an Arab Knesset member that he couldn’t deny or confirm that organs of Palestinian youths and children killed by the Israeli army were taken out for transplants or scientific research.

“‘I couldn’t say for sure that something like that didn’t happen.’”

Amayreh writes that the Knesset member who posed the question said that he “had received ‘credible evidence proving that Israeli doctors at the forensic institute of Abu Kabir extracted such vital organs as the heart, kidneys, and liver from the bodies of Palestinian youth and children killed by the Israeli army in Gaza and the West Bank.” (8)

Israel’s chief pathologist removed from post for stealing body parts

For a number of years there were allegations that Israel’s leading pathologist was stealing body parts. In 2001 the Israeli national news service reported:

“… the parents of soldier Ze’ev Buzgallo who was killed in a Golan Heights military training accident, are filing a petition with the High Court of Justice calling for the immediate suspension of Dr. Yehuda Hiss and that criminal charges be filed against him. Hiss serves as the director of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute….According to the parents, the body of their son was used for medical experimentation without their consent, experiments authorized by Hiss. (9)

Alisdair Sinclair’s death had first alerted authorities to Hiss’s malfeasance in 1998, though nothing was done for years. The Forward reported:

“In 2001, an Israeli Health Ministry investigation found that Hiss had been involved for years in taking body parts, such as legs, ovaries and testicles, without family permission during autopsies, and selling them to medical schools for use in research and training. He was appointed chief pathologist in 1988. Hiss was never charged with any crime, but in 2004 he was forced to step down from running the state morgue, following years of complaints.” (10)

Harvesting kidneys from impoverished communities

According to the Economist, a kidney racket flourished in South Africa between 2001 and 2003. “Donors were recruited in Brazil, Israel and Romania with offers of $5,000-20,000 to visit Durban and forfeit a kidney. The 109 recipients, mainly Israelis, each paid up to $120,000 for a “transplant holiday”; they pretended they were relatives of the donors and that no cash changed hands.” (11)

In 2004 a legislative commission in Brazil reported, “At least 30 Brazilians have sold their kidneys to an international human organ trafficking ring for transplants performed in South Africa, with Israel providing most of the funding.”

According to an IPS report: “The recipients were mostly Israelis, who receive health insurance reimbursements of 70,000 to 80,000 dollars for life-saving medical procedures performed abroad.”

IPS reports:

The Brazilians were recruited in Brazil’s most impoverished neighbourhoods and were paid $10,000 per kidney, “but as ‘supply’ increased, the payments fell as low as 3,000 dollars.” The trafficking had been organized by a retired Israeli police officer, who said “he did not think he was committing a crime, given that the transaction is considered legal by his country’s government.”

The Israeli embassy issued a statement denying any participation by the Israeli government in the illegal trade of human organs but said it did recognize that its citizens, in emergency cases, could undergo organ transplants in other countries, “in a legal manner, complying with international norms,” and with the financial support of their medical insurance.

However, IPS reports that the commission chair termed the Israeli stance “at the very least ‘anti-ethical’, adding that trafficking can only take place on a major scale if there is a major source of financing, such as the Israeli health system.” He went on to state that the resources provided by the Israeli health system “were a determining factor” that allowed the network to function. (12)

Tel Aviv hospital head promotes organ trafficking

IPS goes on to report:

“Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who heads the Organs Watch project at the U.S. University of California, Berkeley, testified to the Pernambuco legislative commission that international trafficking of human organs began some 12 years ago, promoted by Zacki Shapira, former director of a hospital in Tel Aviv.

“Shapira performed more than 300 kidney transplants, sometimes accompanying his patients to other countries, such as Turkey. The recipients are very wealthy or have very good health insurance, and the ‘donors’ are very poor people from Eastern Europe, Philippines and other developing countries, said Scheper-Hughes, who specialises in medical anthropology.”

Israel prosecutes organ traffickers

In 2007 Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper reported that two men confessed to persuading “Arabs from the Galilee and central Israel who were developmentally challenged or mentally ill to agree to have a kidney removed for payment.” They then would refuse to pay them.

The paper reported that the two were part of a criminal ring that included an Israeli surgeon. According to the indictment, the surgeon sold the kidneys he harvested for between $125,000 and $135,000. (13)

Earlier that year another Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, reported that ten members of an Israeli organ smuggling ring targeting Ukrainians had been arrested. (14)

In still another 2007 story, the Jerusalem Post reported that “Professor Zaki Shapira, one of Israel’s leading transplant surgeons, was arrested in Turkey on Thursday on suspicion of involvement in an organ trafficking ring. According to the report, the transplants were arranged in Turkey and took place at private hospitals in Istanbul.”

Israeli organ trafficking comes to the U.S.?

In July of this year even US media reported on the arrest of Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, recently arrested by federal officials in a massive corruption sweep in New Jersey that netted mayors, government officials and a number of prominent rabbis. Bostrom opens his article with this incident.

According to the federal complaint, Rosenbaum, who has close ties to Israel, said that he had been involved in the illegal sale of kidneys for 10 years. A US Attorney explained: “His business was to entice vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000.” (15)

This is reportedly the first case of international organ trafficking in the U.S.

University of California anthropologist and organ trade expert Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who informed the FBI about Rosenbaum seven years ago, says she heard reports that he had held donors at gunpoint to ensure they followed through on agreements to “donate” their organs. (16)

Israel’s organ donor problems

Israel has an extraordinarily small number of willing organ donors. According to the Israeli news service Ynet, “the percentage of organs donated among Jews is the lowest of all the ethnic groups… In western countries, some 30 per cent of the population have organ donor cards. In Israel, in contrast, four percent of the population holds such cards. (17)

“According to statistics from the Health Ministry’s website, in 2001, 88 Israelis died waiting for a transplant because of a lack of donor organs. In the same year, 180 Israelis were brain dead, and their organs could have been used for transplant, but only 80 of their relatives agreed to donate their organs.”

According to Ynet, the low incidence of donors is related to “religious reasons.” In 2006 there was an uproar when an Israeli hospital known for its compliance with Jewish law performed a transplant operation using an Israeli donor. The week before, “a similar incident occurred, but since the patient was not Jewish it passed silently.” (18, 19)

The Swedish article reports that ‘Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased organ collaboration with Israel in the 1990s. Jerusalem Post wrote that “the rest of the European countries are expected to follow France’s example shortly.”

“Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the 2000s have been bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America. Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this business but do nothing to stop it. At a conference in 2003 it was shown that Israel is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn’t condemn the illegal organ trade. The country takes no legal measures against doctors participating in the illegal business – on the contrary, chief medical officers of Israel’s big hospitals are involved in most of the illegal transplants, according to Dagens Nyheter (December 5, 2003).”

To fill this need former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, then health minister of Israel, organized a big donor campaign in the summer of 1992, but while the number of donors skyrocketed, need still greatly surpassed supply.

Palestinian disappearances increase

Bostrom, who earlier wrote of all this in his 2001 book Inshallah, (20) reports in his recent article:

“While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.

“Talk of the bodies terrified the population of the occupied territories. There were rumors of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies.”

“I was in the area at the time, working on a book. On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it. On an assignment from a broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza – meeting parents who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed.”

He describes the case of 19-year-old Bilal Achmed Ghanan, shot by Israeli forces invading his village.

“The first shot hit him in the chest. According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach. Finally, they grabbed him by his feet and dragged him up the twenty stone steps of the workshop stair… Israeli soldiers loading the badly wounded Bilal in a jeep and driving him to the outskirts of the village, where a military helicopter waited. The boy was flown to a destination unknown to his family.”

Five days later he was returned, “dead and wrapped up in green hospital fabric.” Bostrom reports that as the body was lowered into the grave, his chest was exposed and onlookers could see that he was stitched up from his stomach to his head. Bostrom writes that this was not the first time people had seen such a thing.

“The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly what had happened: “Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,” relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin and the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who had all disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and autopsied.”

Why autopsies?

Bostrom describes the questions that families asked:

“Why are they keeping the bodies for up to five days before they let us bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they performing autopsy, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious? Why are the bodies returned at night? Why is it done with a military escort? Why is the area closed off during the funeral? Why is the electricity interrupted?”

Israel’s answer was that all Palestinians who were killed were routinely autopsied. However, Bostrom points out that of the133 Palestinians who were killed that year, only 69 were autopsied.

He goes on to write:

“We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin.

It’s time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by Israel since the Intifada began.” (21)

The new “Blood Libel”?

In scanning through the reaction to Bostrom’s report, one is struck by the multitude of charges that his article is a new version of the old anti-Semitic “blood libel.” Given that fact, it is interesting to examine a 2007 book by Israel’s preeminent expert on medieval Jewish history, and what happened to him.

The author is Bar-Ilan professor (and rabbi) Ariel Toaff, son of the former chief rabbi of Rome, a religious leader so famous that an Israeli journalist writes that Toaff’s father “is to Italian Jewry as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.” Ariel Toaff, himself, is considered “one of the greatest scholars in his field.” (22, 23)

In February 2007 the Israeli and Italian media were abuzz (though most of the U.S. media somehow missed it) with news that Professor Toaff had written a book entitled “Pasque di Sangue” (“Blood Passovers”) (24) containing evidence that there “was a factual basis for some of the medieval blood libels against the Jews.”

Based on 35 years of research, Toaff had concluded that there were at least a few, possibly many, real incidents.

In an interview with an Italian newspaper (the book was published in Italy), Toaff says:

“My research shows that in the Middle Ages, a group of fundamentalist Jews did not respect the biblical prohibition and used blood for healing. It is just one group of Jews, who belonged to the communities that suffered the severest persecution during the Crusades. From this trauma came a passion for revenge that in some cases led to responses, among them ritual murder of Christian children.” (25)

(Incidentally, an earlier book containing similar findings was published some years ago, also by an Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, of whom Noam Chomsky once wrote, “Shahak is an outstanding scholar, with remarkable insight and depth of knowledge. His work is informed and penetrating, a contribution of great value.” ) (26)

Professor Toaff was immediately attacked from all sides, including pressure orchestrated by Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman, but Toaff stood by his 35 years of research, announcing:

“I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me… One shouldn’t be afraid to tell the truth.”

Before long, however, under relentless public and private pressure, Toaff had recanted, withdrawn his book, and promised to give all profits that had already accrued (the book had been flying off Italian bookshelves) to Foxman’s Anti-Defamation League. A year later he published a “revised version.”

Donald Bostrom’s experience seems to be a repeat of what Professor Toaff endured: calumny, vituperation, and defamation. Bostrom has received death threats as well, perhaps an experience that Professor Toaff also shared.

If Israel is innocent of organ plundering accusations, or if its culpability is considerably less than Bostrom and others suggest, it should welcome honest investigations that would clear it of wrongdoing. Instead, the government and its advocates are working to suppress all debate and crush those whose questions and conclusions they find threatening.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than responding to calls for an investigation, is demanding that the Swedish government abandon its commitment to a free press and condemn the article. The Israeli press office, apparently in retaliation and to prevent additional investigation, is refusing to give press credentials to reporters from the offending newspaper.

Just as in the case of the rampage against Jenin, the attack on the USS liberty, the massacre of Gaza, the crushing of Rachel Corrie, the torture of American citizens, and a multitude of other examples, Israel is using its considerable, worldwide resources to interfere with the investigative process.

24/ http://www.bloodpassover.com/toafftableofcontents.htm
Israeli writer Israel Shamir reports that some years ago “…a leading Chabad rabbi, Yitzhak Ginzburgh, gave his religious permission for a Jew to take a liver from a non-Jew even without his consent. He said that ‘a Jew is entitled to extract the liver from a goy if he needs it, for the life of a Jew is more valuable than the life of a goy, likewise the life of a goy is more valuable than the life of an animal.’

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel urged the Swedish government on Sunday to condemn an article in a Swedish newspaper last week accusing the Israeli Army of harvesting organs from Palestinians wounded or killed by soldiers.

As the furor in Israel over the article gathered into a diplomatic storm revolving around questions of anti-Semitism and freedom of speech, Mr. Netanyahu told ministers at a cabinet meeting on Sunday that the article, published in the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet, was “outrageous” and compared it to a “blood libel,” referring to medieval anti-Semitic accusations that Jews ritually killed gentile children and collected their blood.

“We are not asking the government of Sweden for an apology,” Mr. Netanyahu said, according to an official who attended the cabinet meeting and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We are asking for their condemnation. We are not asking from them anything we do not ask of ourselves.”

Mr. Netanyahu made his comments behind closed doors, but other Israeli ministers have publicly attacked the Swedish government’s refusal to take an official stand against the article. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s outspoken foreign minister, has led the protest, saying that the Swedish government’s silence was “reminiscent of Sweden’s position during World War II, when it also did not become involved.”

Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli finance minister, said: “Whoever does not distance himself from a blood libel such as this may not be so welcome now in Israel. We have a crisis until the government of Sweden understands otherwise.”

Sweden currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, and its foreign minister, Carl Bildt, is scheduled to visit Israel next month.

Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said Sunday that Israel had no intention of canceling the visit but that the Aftonbladet affair would “cast a shadow” over it if left unresolved.

Mr. Bildt has rejected Israeli calls for an official condemnation of the article. Explaining his position, he wrote in a blog post late Thursday that freedom of expression was part of the Swedish Constitution, according to The Associated Press.

Sweden’s ambassador to Israel, Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, issued a statement last week calling the Aftonbladet article “shocking and appalling” and sharing the dismay of the Israeli government and public, but the Swedish Foreign Ministry disavowed her denunciation.

As an initial step, Israeli officials said they would not rush to issue press credentials to two visiting Swedish journalists from Aftonbladet, but would instead undertake a thorough evaluation of their request, a process that could take up to three months.

“Israel is under assault,” said Daniel Seaman, director of Israel’s Government Press Office. The Aftonbladet article, he said, was part of a “premeditated campaign to vilify the State of Israel.” He added that anti-Semitic blood libels had led in the past to pogroms and attacks against Jews. “We cannot afford to turn the other way.”

The article, by the Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom, ran on an inside page of the newspaper on Aug. 17. It was based on accusations Mr. Bostrom heard from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1990s, and which he published in a book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2001. Mr. Seaman said Mr. Bostrom last worked here in 2006.

Mr. Bostrom apparently revived the allegations by linking them to the July arrests of 44 people in New Jersey in a major corruption and international money laundering conspiracy that included several assemblymen, mayors and rabbis. One of its members, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, faces charges of conspiring to broker the illegal sale of a human kidney for transplant.

Aftonbladet followed up on Sunday with an article about one of the Palestinian families at the center of the original accusations.

In interviews with the Israeli news media, Mr. Bostrom has said that he has no idea whether the accusations are true, but that they warrant investigation. In his Aug. 17 article, he included a denial of the claims by the Israeli military.

Jan Helin, the editor in chief of Aftonbladet, did not immediately return a call from The New York Times.

Some have raised questions about whether Israel’s reaction has been counterproductive. Lena Posner, a leader of the Jewish community in Stockholm, told the Israeli news Web site Ynet that Israel had caused a “mess” by drawing undue attention to the original article and turning the debate in Sweden into one about the need to protect freedom of expression.

“That is the eternal dilemma,” said Mr. Palmor of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “Should you try to take action or look the other way?” Israel chose not to ignore the article, he said, because it was so egregious and could end up causing “physical aggression.”

The Aftonbladet episode dominated Israeli headlines on Sunday. The columnist Eitan Haber wrote on the front page of Yediot Aharonot that “Freedom of the press does not mean the publication of lies that justify the killing of Israeli soldiers and civilians.”

Alison Weir has now uncovered additional information on Israeli organ trafficking and harvesting.

Following her CounterPunch article (http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/sweden.html), the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs asked Alison to write a piece for them. In researching the subject further she found even more somewhat explosive information on the topic, largely from Israeli media.

…Scheper-Hughes …is unflinchingly honest in speaking about the Israeli connection:
“Israel is at the top,” she states. “It has tentacles reaching out worldwide.”6

* * *

… In her Forum 13 lecture Scheper-Hughes discussed the two motivations of Israeli traffickers. One was greed, she said. The other was somewhat chilling: “Revenge, restitution—reparation for the Holocaust.”

She described speaking with Israeli brokers who told her “it’s kind of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We’re going to get every single kidney and liver and heart that we can. The world owes it to us.’”

* * *

… For many years the Israeli health system subsidized its citizens’ “transplant holidays,” … In addition, Israel’s Ministry of Defense was directly involved.

* * *

… “several other Palestinians gave a similar narrative, recounting how they received the bodies of their murdered relatives, mostly men in their early twenties, with vital organs taken away by the Israeli authorities.”

Israel has consistently characterized such accusations as “anti-Semitic,” and numerous other journalists have discounted them as exaggerations.

However, according to the pro-Israel Forward magazine, the truth of these charges was, in fact, confirmed by an Israeli governmental investigation a number of years ago.

* * *

… In 1996, Jewish Week reported that Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, a leader of the Lubavitch sect of Judaism and the dean of a religious Jewish school in a West Bank settlement, stated: “If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that.” Ginzburgh elaborated: “Jewish life has infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.” [The Jewish Week, April 26, 1996, pp. 12, 31]

Still more news!

1. Alison has just returned from an extended speaking tour throughout Alaska at World Affairs Councils and other venues in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Homer, as well as appearing on several radio programs. Despite pressure brought by the Israeli government, AIPAC, and the chair of the Alaska Democratic Party, the presentations went forward successfully and were extremely well received by large and diverse audiences.

We urge people to subscribe to the Washington Report, founded by retired foreign service officers committed to getting the facts on Palestine and Israel out to the American public — http://www.wrmea.org/subscribe.html

Also, the publishers will ship copies of the magazine to groups putting on events for distribution to audience members. You may contact them about this at (202) 939-6050 or admin@wrmea.org .

Finally, the magazine also has a superb collection of books for sale at extremely reasonable prices:http://www.middleeastbooks.com/ An example is Donald Neff’s valuable book FIFTY YEARS OF ISRAEL, available for just $4.

Without your donations, it will be impossible for us to continue this work. Please continue to contribute all you can — no quantity is too little or too large!

We apologize for not having been able to take the time out to phone and thank all of you personally for your greatly appreciated contributions! Please feel free to phone Alison Weir anytime you wish to speak with her directly — 202.631.4060.

From: General (Ret) James David (who is mentioned on the cover of the third edition of former Republican Congressman Paul Findley’s ‘The Dare to Speak Out’ book about the power/influence of the pro-Israel lobby on the US media and political system):

Let’s see how balanced the Atlanta Journal-Constitution really is according to your recent claim in Saturday’s edition. I can bet my bottom dollar that the AJC won’t publish this Associated Press story. The AJC has no problem publishing stories critical to Hamas, Gaza, Palestinians, Syria, and Iran but goes out of its way not to publish anything critical of Israel even though there have been numerous stories of its human rights violations and, most recently, the Goldstone Report citing the Jewish state of numerous war crimes in its latest war in Gaza where more than 1400 Palestinians were slaughtered, including 320 women and children. In addition, the Israelis bombed schools, hospitals, mosques, and ambulances.
I can understand you not publishing thje organ harvesting story a few months ago when the government of Sweden first reported it, but now that we have proof, I am waiting to here what you have to say now. The last excuse you gave me for not publishing news critical of Israel was that it not being an AP story and therefore not having access to it. You can’t use the same excuse this time.
James J. David

The Associated Press: Israel harvested organs in ’90s without permissionIsrael harvested organs in ’90s without consent
Military confirms informal practice, claims it ‘does not happen anymore’

updated 9:03 p.m. ET, Sun., Dec . 20, 2009
JERUSALEM – Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.

The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr. Jehuda Hiss. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Hiss said, “We started to harvest corneas … Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.”

The Channel 2 report said that in the 1990s, forensic specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer,” the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.

‘We’d glue eyelid shut’
In the interview, Hiss described how his doctors would mask the removal of corneas from bodies. “We’d glue the eyelid shut,” he said. “We wouldn’t take corneas from families we knew would open the eyelids.”

Many of the details in the interview first came to light in 2004, when Hiss was dismissed as head of the forensic institute because of irregularities over use of organs there. Israel’s attorney general dropped criminal charges against him, and Hiss still works as chief pathologist at the institute. He had no comment on the TV report.

Hiss became director of the institute in 1988. He said in the interview that the practice of harvesting organs without permission began in the “early 1990s.” However, he also said that military surgeons removed a thin layer of skin from bodies as early as 1987 to treat burn victims. Hiss said he believed that was done with family consent. The harvesting ended in 2000, he said.

Complaints against the institute, where autopsies of dead bodies are performed, at the time of Hiss’ dismissal came from relatives of Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinians. The bodies belonged to people who died from various causes, including diseases, accidents and Israeli-Palestinian violence, but there has been no evidence to back up the claim in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians for their organs. Angry Israeli officials called the report “anti-Semitic.”

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Access the youtube linked via the following URL to see how the Anti-Semite ‘Trick’ is used: